1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to portable easels, specifically to a lightweight easel system with improved means of transport, improved wind stability, improved means of raising and lowering the canvas, and improved storage and access of materials for acrylic or oil-on-canvas painting. The system is composed of components that can be used together, or separately.
2. Discussion of Prior Art
Heretofore, attempts to design portable equipment for landscape painting include the traditional wooden French paint-box easel, a smaller paint-box easel with shoulder straps, and folding aluminum easels.
The traditional French wooden paintbox-easel is heavy and cumbersome, weighing over 12 pounds without art materials, and is carried by a handle. The apparatus consists of a wooden paintbox fitted with two collapsible front wooden legs pivotally joined with thrubolts to each side of the paintbox front end, and a back leg pivotally attached to the back that folds into a bottom slot. The hinged lid can be stood upright, with adjustable wooden devices to hold a canvas. The drawer is subdivided into compartments for art materials, with additional compartments beneath the drawer. A pallet is included.
The unopened apparatus is unstable when placed upright on the ground due to the protruding drawer handle. It must be carefully balanced during assembly and disassembly, which can be risky with a wet painting mounted on the easel. The nut-and-bolt fasteners for the legs and lid are tedious. The legs are assembled while stooping or squatting to loosen and re-fasten seven wingnuts. Raising and lowering the canvas while painting is time consuming. Only 50% of the art materials are accessible from the painters position in front of the easel. If the drawer is used to support the pallet, the materials within are completely inaccessible. There is no means to safely hold brushes charged with paint, which must be hand held or balanced precariously on the drawer or pallet. This arrangement is especially awkward when the painter needs to squeeze more paint from a tube, necessitating either walking to the side to rest the pallet on the open box, covering up even more materials, or squatting and putting everything on the ground. There is no provision for essential jars of solvent. There is no means to mount a canvas over three feet in height. The apparatus is somewhat stable in the wind only due to its heavy weight. It is annoying to carry the heavy apparatus to a setting such as a class where just a paintbox is required. However, one advantage is that the pivoting lid lowers to a horizontal position for watercolors.
A smaller version of the traditional paintbox was developed to compensate for the weight. It weighs 8.5 pounds and is fitted with thin uncomfortable leather shoulder straps, but no waist belt. In addition to all of the above disadvantages, there is very little space for paint supplies.
Although there has been no subsequent development of the paintbox easel, significant improvement has occurred in portable folding easels. Lacking a paintbox entirely, aluminum folding easels are lighter. Typically they comprise an upright tripod supporting arrangement, with adjustable legs, and with means to support a stretched canvas. The wobbly lightweight legs are often supported by pivotal tie-bars, pivotally connected to a central hub, or by braces. Such easels typically fold to approximately three feet long, and weight at least three pounds. Canvas and paintbox must be carried separately, the paintbox placed awkwardly on the ground for use. Nakatani's easel features a snap down tee-shaped internal rigidifier sufficient to support a paintbox at a convenient height while painting, but not during transport. Lightweight aluminum folding easels are almost never displayed in stores with a full set of painting materials, because the problem of transport would be glaringly obvious.
Lightweight modern easels easily blow over in the wind. Some are furnished with stakes at the leg bottoms that can be stuck into the ground, but often these do not solve the wind problem, because staking the bottom of the easel yields the least leverage against the wind pushing on the canvas at the top. Attached stakes are cumbersome because the easel leg can be placed only where the ground is sufficiently soft. Neuwirth's easel clamp is more secure in the wind, but obscures an annoyingly large area of the canvas upper edge, and the leg mounted lower canvas supports on such easels are awkward to adjust. On most lightweight easels, there is usually insufficient means to fasten both top and bottom of the canvas to the easel with real security, and raising or lowering the canvas while painting is tedious. No means have been developed to brace the upper courners of a canvas to a lightweight portable easel.
A continuing need therefore exists for a comprehensive, lightweight, sturdy apparatus for landscape painting that combines convenience of transport, safe storage and convenient access to paint supplies from the painter's position in front of the easel, ease of raising and lowering the canvas, stability in the wind, and ability to mount a large canvas.